Not Very Close Captioning

The audio on the school-made video we were watching in homeroom was too low, so I turned on the auto-captioning to help us follow along. The production was of a panel discussion with current seventh graders answering questions that the sixth graders had submitted about next year. 

One of the topics of interest was field trips, and the student being interviewed mentioned the one and only trip they had taken this year. "We went to the Outdoor Lab," he reported in a mask-muffled voice. 

My students gasped when they read the auto-caption: We went to the after life. 

And when asked about one of the best things about seventh grade? "Definitely the Outdoor Lab," responded another student.

Or Definitely the altar of love, according to the auto-captions.

"I'm not sure if I want to go on that field trip," giggled one of my students.

GOAT

Another fun feature of the hyperbole lesson the other day was the warm up question: What's the greatest thing in the world?

Bless their hearts; my students are very earnest. When the class list was compiled, family, friends, and free time were on the top followed closely by food, music, and sleep. 

"What do you think is the greatest thing in the world?" someone asked me.

"Definitely the morning announcements," I said, laughing when she gasped. "They are soooooooo much better than love, dogs, or vacation!"

"Really?" she shook her head.

"No!" I replied. "It's hyperbole. But I do love the morning announcements!"

This morning when my homeroom kids came in the tally was still on the whiteboard. "I see there's still only one vote for the morning announcements," one of the students noted.

"And that's all there will be," I told him. "We're done with that question.

"Don't feel bad," he continued. "There's only one vote for world peace, too."

Freestyle

Today was my last day as Professor Marshmallow, but with a lesson on rhyming coming up tomorrow? 

Ima be DJ Marshymarshmallow next.

Word.

A Bit of an Overstatement

Today, when the lesson was on hyperbole, the fun challenge was to find your "superhero name" based on a silly list and your initials. I know my audience, though, and the activity was very entertaining for all of us. In fact, coupled with the warm-up question, What is the greatest thing in the world? (sleep, the weekend, food, love, friendship, yo mama?), it provided all sorts of inspiration for humorous hyperbole poems.

According to the list, my alter ego is Professor Marshmallow, an identity I embraced with a homemade nameplate and a modified Patrick-Stewart-as-Dr-X accent. And when a table of kids was a little too chatty? 

Quoth Professor Marshmallow: "Don't make me go all hot chocolate on you!" 

Since 1665

"I need to clean off the deck," I sighed this morning, cringing at the clutter of empty hanging baskets, pots for plants, dead leaves, and the remains of an empty bird nest I had recently knocked from the rafters. As I mentally added the task to my ever so long list of spring chores, I took a deep breath and remembered what I realized this morning: When I retire? There should be nothing stopping me checking off everything on my to-do list. I may finally organize my life.

"This place is going to be spic and span when I retire!" I told Heidi, who raised her eyebrows and nodded appreciatively. "Spic and span!" I repeated, and then wondered where that phrase (as accurate as it was to describe my post-retirement aspirations) came from. I haven't heard it in a while, I thought. Is it some kind of slur I should remove from my vocabulary?

Thank goodness for the internet when it comes to questions like that. A quick search revealed that the phrase was first seen in print in 1665. It derives from "spiksplinternieuw" a Dutch expression about brand new ships and their spiky wood splinters. My research also led me to a nifty feature that the Merriam-Webster website has, called Time Traveler. There you can read all the words that were first seen in print in any given year; it is like a time-elapsed view of the evolution our language.

What other words were first published in 1665? Notably to me on the list of 94 were amok, biography, fossil, putty, rationalize, and volcano, but the list is fascinating, and you would certainly be intrigued.

Playing around with it, instead of cleaning the deck, (rabbit hole: 1938) I also discovered that zip code, T-ball, salsa, ramen, and porn weren't part of the language until 1962. What a year of innovation that was!

Where's Lucy?

I was looking around, without much luck, for an electronic copy of a recipe I haven't made in a while. I searched my Google drive, my phone messages, my email, and finally my DropBox account with no luck. But I did find the picture of Lucy that the breeder sent before we got her, along with a group shot of her whole litter: five sleepy red puppies propped adorably against each other. 

"Which one do you think is Lucy?" I asked Heidi, a question we have pondered several times over the years, whenever our attention is returned to that family photo. 

We compared her solo shot to the group pictures, looking at eyes, fur, nose, and while there was something recognizable in her portrait, we just couldn't be definitive about which puppy was her in the other one. "We can't even recognize our own dog!" I said.

TBT

I forgot to post an extra challenge yesterday, and to be honest, I was inclined to skip the whole routine, especially because the deadline for the children's book project was looming at the end of class. But when the kids asked about it, I decided to go ahead and throw something up. 

Or rather I should say, throw something back. I made the challenge a Throwback Thursday and asked any who were willing to post pictures of themselves when they were younger. If I had thought it through, I would have realized that such an activity is almost the definition of distraction, and it did take away much more of our class time than I wanted. 

BUT, it was extremely motivating, since everyone had to post a poem before they could share a photo, and it was a community builder: almost everyone was very engaged with the activity. Plus? My students were really adorable little kids, and who wouldn't want to wrap up the first week back after spring break with such a warm and fuzzy bow?